The Second Kind of Secret
by SisterGrimmErin
Summary: "Zuko should know better, but he doesn't."


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Title

: The Second Kind of Secret

**Author****s**: Sister Grimm Erin and Neko Kuroban.

**Fandom**: _Avatar: The Last Airbender_.

**Pairings**: Implications of Zuko/Katara, Katara/Aang, and Mai/Zuko.

**Rating** **(Warnings)**: T for implications of adultery and mild swearing.

**Summary**: Zuko does things he knows he should not. What else is new?

* * *

**The Second Kind of Secret**

**By Sister Grimm Erin and Neko Kuroban**

* * *

Zuko knows he should not be sleeping with his best friend's girl, much less the wife of the Avatar. However, his entire existence has been spent doing everything he should not have. This is hardly anything new.

He wishes he could say it was because he loved her, but Zuko has always had difficulty loving _anyone_. He had loved his mother deeply, and, once she was gone, it was as if she had taken his ability to love along with her.

But he _does_ care about her. He does. They are good friends, and she is a lovely woman, sweet and kind and occasionally self-absorbed.

Privately, Zuko thinks it is the last quality he finds the most attractive -- the fact that the girl who gives so much to everyone else posseses a selfish streak, that he is not alone in his incredible egocentricity. He finds her frustration that she lives in the shadows sexy, and he exploits it. He likes the fact that she indulges his melancholy and that he can be so full of bullshit around Katara -- because, out of all his friends, she is the only one who will not call him on it.

And he is ashamed, make no mistake, but still Zuko swims in it -- not fighting against the current of guilt, never thinking a waterfall might be ahead -- but it is met soon enough.

Katara is pregnant.

She uses a euphemism of some sort when she tells him, but he knows the look in her eyes. Zuko has always had the curious curse of seeing unpleasant truths but never meaningful ones. He has never even considered that he might be a father, that the blend of contraceptive herbs in the tea Katara always drank might fail, that they might make a mistake.

Because his line is royal, because responsibility and obligation have been hammered into him since birth, because he has his honor, because he is Aang's friend as much as he is hers -- he does what he does next: he offers to marry her.

That is probably why their affair ends. She realizes that he is not completely darkness, fascinating and forbidden.

So does he.

* * *

Months pass. Aang's face grows happier and prouder yet more concerned. Katara smiles along with him. Zuko prays that the baby is born with blue eyes and thick brown hair that her mother can braid and pin, but the Banished King (as his more honest courtiers call him, always behind his back) is never that lucky.

The daughter of the Avatar is named Kya, after Katara's deceased mother.

Her naming ceremony is strictly among friends, intimate and quiet, full of love and tension. Zuko sits on the edge of his seat the entire time, unable to hide his fidgeting. Sokka's eyes catch his time and time again. He looks suspicious, and Zuko wonders just how good the seemingly hapless warrior is at detecting nuances. Aang's face is proud but tense as he cradles his infant daughter in his arms, and Zuko is braced for the worst. He sits in the back row, between Sokka and Mai (who he has long since parted ways with, but he cannot help noticing that she looks better than ever), and he cannot quite hide his shame as he takes in his daughter's golden eyes and black hair.

He remembers.

* * *

"_It is fortunate_," Grandfather had remarked at Azula's birth.

Mother had fallen asleep on the birthing bed, sleeping on her side with her arms outstretched as if to embrace something. The baby had been taken from her, washed then wrapped in red silks and placed in an elaborately carved bassinet. The room had been chaos an hour or two ago: chanting priests standing over burning incense, a team of medics, a host of midwives, servants running to and fro. They had been clearing out when Zuko's nursemaid brought him in (the young woman had been dismissed at the doorway; propriety dictated that she not see the wife of the prince in such a state), but the scent of ash and flame and incense remained. The toddler had been instructed to find his dry nurse once more, but he had ignored the instructions, staring, fascinated, at the bassinet that held his new sister long after everyone had left.

Zuko, then a scrap of a child at two, had heard the approach of his father and grandfather, and, not wanting to be discovered even then, he had crawled beneath the bassinet. The silk hangings, embroidered with charms and symbols for luck and fortune, were enough to conceal a toddler, especially one as small as he had been, from their view, but he could see the hems of their elaborate garments and the tips of their feet.

"_The blood of the imperial family breeds true_," Grandfather had said, voice drawling. "_For obvious reasons, we know that our legitimate children are ours. In that it is a useful trait. Unfortunately, however, any bastards we might have around are the second kind of secret._"

Zuko remembered hearing his father's sardonic chuckle. It was the laugh Father had, in those days, only used around Grandfather, and Zuko had been unnerved by it even then. By the time he came to power, it was the only sound of mirth or amusement Zuko could recall hearing from the man. "_The kind everyone knows but dares not speak aloud, simply because it would make their lives that much more complicated_?"

The old Fire Lord -- still a sharp, powerful man -- had laughed, amused. "_Exactly so, my son. Just be vigilant of the gossips and their matchstick tongues, if the occasion should arise._"

* * *

The new Fire Lord thought he had understood once he had grown past the age of reason, but seeing the girl-child's eyes and Katara's guiltless face is a revelation. He wonders if the girl -- his_ daughter_ -- bears the curse of his blood. What will appear in his eyes as she comes of age? His mother's sorrow? Azula's madness? His father's violence? His own depression?

Zuko feels a fresh dose of guilt, stronger than in years. It falls (rather than roll) down (not off) his shoulders.

He wonders whether it is a coincidence that the occasion had been scheduled for when Ty Lee is out of town. He remembers the joke Katara had once made about Ty Lee's uncanny sense of perception and her inability to curb her tongue, and he does not have to. He can easily imagine what Ty Lee would say upon seeing the child; she would not fear treading where no one else dared go.

He sees Aang's face, full of love and sorrow, and Zuko thinks of how he had felt the night his mother had bent over him and told him she had to leave, promising to one day return for him.

Katara loves Aang in her own way, and Zuko knows she does. Aang is her light, her steadfast stalwart, but the utter lack of respect she has always shown him -- she supports him as her friend, adores him as her student, cares for him as her lover, but never respects him as an _equal_ in anything they do -- makes it hard for her to remember that sometimes.

At one point in the ceremony, Aang's eyes catch his. There is no accusation there, only a brief flash of gratitude and the other emotions one would expect from a new father. Sokka looks at him like he has not in a very long time, wary and uncertain but curiously silent. Toph cannot see, but the undercurrents of tension in the room do not escape her, and, when she takes the baby in his arms, Zuko wonders if she feels anything that the rest of them cannot.

The Banished King (he has come to admire the courage of conscience, in a backhanded manner, of those that gave him the epithet, and now he thinks of himself that way) holds his daughter. She will be Aang's in every way that matters, he knows, and he adopts the pleased, serene mask he had learned to have from birth.

He expects to feel something cradling his daughter, but he does not love Kya, not in the way a parent does a child. He only has a flash of _empathy _so strong for the baby, Zuko wants to keep her from returning to Aang, for in Kya's fate has been written happiness but a strange frustration with the adults who would otherwise adore her fully from birth, and it is all his fault.

The river of shame washes over him once more, but it is scalds him as he hands the child to Katara without hesitation, because he feels like it would be so much better if he had taken even a moment's pause to allow some love for this girl and her mother into his heart, instead of merely pitying himself.

What is there Zuko can do to repent?

Nothing.

He had set the perfect trap for himself -- a fiery current of shame over what knowledge of his actions would do to the people he is supposed to love like family but has cuckolded.

Uncle Iroh's eyes meet his for but a moment, and Zuko feels very, very small.

Uncle has always been able to bring the father and grandfather Zuko so resembles down to humility in very short order, too.

* * *

After the party, he walks Mai back to the edge of the road -- no horses or palanquins for that girl. She looks at him, and he expects the old torrent of blunt argument.

He thinks it will do him good.

Instead, she smiles up at him without a trace of the bitterness he knows she must be feeling. She says that she still loves him and that her offer still stands, and she continues on her journey.

Zuko realizes at that moment she is one of three people who knows him well enough to make him feel like shit, even more than he can make himself. The first was, of course, the uncle who had always been so much more of a father than the man who gave him life.

The third is his sister. Zuko visits her twice a year without fail, always on the anniversary of Ba Sing Se and the coronation, because she and he are the only ones who have not let go enough to celebrate.

* * *

Kya spends her toddler years normally enough, with a single aberration.

Just as Zuko and Azula had, she begins to bend fire on her second birthday. For an entire day after he gets the note, Zuko hopes that the flames at her fingertips will be what makes Aang see reason. Perhaps the lightning in her eyes will make him cease loving another man's bastard, if not enough to make him let go of Katara herself.

The next time he visits their family he is grimly satisfied to find Kya calling flame. Aang only chuckles and chalks it up to him being the Avatar, because if he loses his perfect view of Katara, he will have to suffer a loss Zuko had felt as a child and he never recovered from.

Zuko forces himself through the day with a mask of perfect normalcy.

At night, in the privacy of his chambers, he drinks his jealousy away with a fresh bottle of bad brandy.

His healer gives him a curious look in the morning, but the good man asks no questions -- because he knows that Lord Ozai's son is far more to his father than anyone would suspect, because he understands that Zuko's resemblance to his father runs far deeper than just the superficial, and because the medicine mage has a family to support.

**

* * *

**

Sokka opens his mouth and closes it sixteen times every time he is alone with Zuko. The secret is one that he alone cannot pretend not to know. By all the gods, the fire-bender wishes he would say something, but even Katara's brother is not quite brave enough to break the illusion.

Or perhaps Sokka is just cleverer than the rest of them. Perhaps he wants to wait for Kya to see the obvious.

**

* * *

**

Kya adores Aang with a passion that equals her true father's feelings for her. She has all of his innocence and optimism, none of Zuko's pessimism.

It is not until she is about to become a teenager that Zuko begins to see traces of cynicism and rebellion. She does not show a sign of Katara's selfishness, though she can be just as stubborn or determined. Zuko does not see in her his own sister's madness or his father's malevolence, but there is nothing of his uncle there, either. He does witness the sadness and confusion that passes through her eyes, and he wonders if that is his own contribution. He thinks it is.

Kya has never gotten along with Katara, and, although Katara cannot comprehend it, Zuko understands perfectly.

Katara does not pretend everything is fine. To her, it really _is_. She has a husband she loves who all but worships her in return, a beautiful child, and a meaningful life. But Kya is complete selflessness, like the father of her heart and not like the father of her blood, and her adolescent search for the truth, for meaning in life -- Zuko hopes she finds it when she reaches maturity; he does not want her to follow in his footsteps and continue it all her life -- will not allow her to keep the second kind of secret, the kind everybody knows but does not dare speak aloud.

* * *

Kya comes to Zuko on her fourteenth birthday. Her party had been modest but a success; she and her mother did not shout but they did glare silently over the table. Zuko and Kya were never close as they should have been or as awkward as they could have been. They maintained a distant relationship over the years, as if he really was a mere family friend.

The moment she sits down, he knows why she has come.

"You are my father." There is no question in her voice.

Their golden eyes meet as equals for the first time. Neither of them finds Katara's selfishness, Azula's madness, Iroh's good humor, Ozai's fury, or the old Fire Lord's calculating nature.

The two fire-benders only find that they do not belong.

"Your father is the Avatar," Zuko says.

Kya looks at him, and she sighs. It is the kind of sigh a man like Zuko should be sighing, mature beyond her years. "I love my dad," she tells him, "but I think you're a better fire-bender when it comes down to it. He has trouble calling lightning."

Kya's golden eyes narrow, and Zuko remembers Azula's intelligence and pride, how she excelled in all arenas she tested herself in, without bitterness.

"You owe me, I think. Teach me."

Her gaze returns to normal, and he sees a hint of Aang there. It is enough to reassure him that she will not use the knowledge for evil or personal gain. He believes that she, like her father before her, really does want to make the world a better place.

"I want to be a warrior, but the kind that fights on the right side. Teach me how... to use power and not be corrupted completely by it. I know what you did. But... I guess if my father respects you, I'll give it a shot."

Zuko finds himself agreeing in a heartbeat. He is too shocked to do anything more.

After all these years worrying, it is the last thing he would have expected to find. In this bastard daughter, a determined young girl with his golden eyes and his black hair, is a young woman who believes he has things to teach her.

Kya wants to leave the conversation. It is in her eyes, in her tense posture, in the way she holds her head, and it makes him think of his mother. Despite this, she stays.

Zuko feels an epiphany coming along, one of those meaningful truths so rare it might pass a man by. The Banished King grasps onto it, and he finds the words to put to the feeling.

_There is always repentance, even for secrets, and sometimes forgiveness is there all along._

Kya is not his daughter, and he is not her father. She is, however, his protégé, and she will be his beginning.


End file.
